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Subtitles or captions – some recent articles

By H Dominic W Stiles, on 7 June 2012

There is at present some pressure for more captions or subtitles to be made available on web content among other places (search for example with #captionTHIS on Twitter). However, for some Deaf people or people with hearing difficulties this may not help as there are other factors involved such as the speed of captions appearing on the screen, particularly with literal translation, and also the reading ability of the person. People who may have sign language but have low or no reading ability of English or their national language, are therefore often excluded from national life and isolated. Here are a few articles from Medline (via PubMed) that look at subtitles or captions:

Parameters in television captioning for deaf and hard-of-hearing adults: effects of caption rate versus text reduction on comprehension.

Burnham D, Leigh G, Noble W, Jones C, Tyler M, Grebennikov L, Varley A.

J Deaf Stud Deaf Educ. 2008 Summer;13(3):391-404. Epub 2008 Mar 27.

PMID: 18372297  Free Article
Near-verbatim captioning versus edited captioning for students who are deaf or hard of hearing: a preliminary investigation of effects on comprehension.

Ward P, Wang Y, Paul P, Loeterman M.

Am Ann Deaf. 2007 Spring;152(1):20-8.

PMID: 17642361

Verbatim, standard, or edited? Reading patterns of different captioning styles among deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing viewers.

Szarkowska A, Krejtz I, Klyszejko Z, Wieczorek A.

Am Ann Deaf. 2011 Fall;156(4):363-78.

PMID: 22256538

Comprehension of television messages by deaf students at various stages of education.

Cambra C, Silvestre N, Leal A.

Am Ann Deaf. 2009 Winter;153(5):425-34.

PMID: 19350951